This invention relates to a display for a record/playback device and, more particularly, to such a display that indicates to the user the present position of the record medium used with that device as well as numerical indications regarding the number of a message or instruction which has been recorded or which is in position for playback.
The invention disclosed herein is usable with a device of a type described in co-pending application Ser. No. 564,191, filed Dec. 21, 1983.
In many record/playback devices, such as dictation/transcription machines, it is desirable to provide indications of different types of information recorded thereon. Typically, these indications have been categorized broadly as "letter" or "message" indications, referring to the relative location of the end (or beginning) of a letter or message, and "instruction" indications referring to the relative location of a dictated instruction. In addition, these devices typically are provided with an indication of the present position of the record medium used therewith as that medium is transported for recording, playback, fast-forward and reverse movement. The letter (or message) and instruction indications generally are helpful both to the dictator who is in the process of recording and reviewing information and a transcriptionist who transcribes the messages which the dictator has recorded.
It has been common to provide various displays of the aforenoted letter (or message), instruction and present-position indications directly on the recording/reproducing device. In earlier devices, letter and instruction indications have been provided by suitable marks scribed on an index slip as the message is recorded; and present-position indications have been provided by mechanical counters incremented or decremented with the movement of the record medium and also by mechanical pointers traversing an index scale. In these devices, when the record medium is loaded into a transcribing machine for transcription of the recorded messages, the prepared index slip also must be loaded into that machine so as to apprise the operator of the relative locations of the letters (or messages) and instructions which have been recorded.
An improvement to the use of such scribed index slips for indicating the locations of letters (or messages) and instructions has been developed, whereby "letter" and "instruction" signals (referred to herein as "cue" signals) are electronically recorded on the very same record medium upon which the dictated messages are recorded. The cue signals are of a predetermined frequency to be detected electronically when the record medium is advanced. One such system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,051,540, wherein visual indicators are selectively energized to provide appropriate indications of the locations of such recorded cue signals. An improvement to the system described in the aforementioned patent is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,200,893, wherein the visual indicators are controlled by a digital processor, such as a microprocessor. A still further improvement is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,378,577.
In the aforementioned patents, the "letter" and "instruction" indications are displayed by suitable arrays of visual indicators, such as linear arrays wherein each visual indicator represents a quantity, or length of record medium and is selectively energized to apprise the user of the relative location on that medium of the recorded letter or instruction. U.S. Pat. No. 4,378,577 also describes the use of an additional numerical display which provides a numerical indication (e.g. in terms of time, such as minutes) of the present position of the record medium.
It also has been proposed to utilize a so-called "shutter" display wherein a number of contiguous visual indicators are energized to display the present position of a recording tape. The shutter display is accompanied by separate tape-length and letter-length displays which provide respective numerical indications of the total length of tape that has been transported and the total length of each separate letter that has been recorded. Although the length of each letter may be indicated, one disadvantage attending this proposal is the failure to indicate the number of the letter, or message, which has been recorded or which is in position for playback. For example, if the dictator has recorded a number of messages but then wishes to revise message number 2, there is no simple, numerical display apprising the dictator when the tape has been reversed and message number 2 has been reached. Similarly, if a number of separate instructions are recorded, the user is not provided with a simple numerical display of the number of the instruction that has been reached by transporting the tape thereto.
As described in aforementioned copending application Ser. No. 564,191, a miniaturized record/playback device has been proposed with microprocessor-control over the various operating functions thereof. Notwithstanding the small size of this record/playback device, it is advantageous to provide therein a suitable display by which the user is apprised of the present position of the record medium used therewith, the number of the particular letter, or message, which is being recorded or played back, the number of the particular instruction which is being recorded or which as been reached, and the mode of operation of the device. However, because of the small overall size of the device, the aforementioned display desirably is operable in various different modes such that the same display elements are used to apprise a user of different information. For example, a common numerical display is used to display, in one mode, a numerical count representing the present position of the record medium, and in another mode this numerical display operates to display the number of the message which was last-recorded or which is in position for playback. Furthermore, this same numerical display is additionally operable to display the number of an instruction being recorded or the number of the recorded instruction that has been reached. Thus, the user of the device is readily apprised of the particular letter, or message, in position for playback (or recording), and may rapidly scan the record medium to revise or review a particular message or instruction. Hence, the disadvantages attending the aforenoted total-length and letter-length displays are overcome and, moreover, a common numerical display is utilized to provide valuable information regarding the present position of and present message on the record medium.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,410,923 describes an array of light indicating elements for use in a record/playback device wherein successive elements are energized when predetermined incremental-quantities of information are recorded on a movable record medium. For example, when information is recorded on a magnetic tape transportable between supply and take-up reels, it is known that the angular velocity of, for example, the supply reel varies as a function of the amount of tape wound thereby. It is conventional to generate pulses as the supply (or take-up) reel rotates and to use these pulses to increment both a tape-length counter and a "time-line" indicator. However, since the interval between successive pulses is reduced as the radius of the supply reel decreases, an accurate time-line display should not be based merely on the number of such pulses which are counted. In the aforementioned patent, a microprocessor-controlled technique is described for "linearizing" these pulses such that a pulse count is produced which more accurately represents a linear quantity of tape that has been transported rather than the number of rotations that the supply (or take-up) reel has undergone. It is advantageous, in the present invention, to provide a similar "linearizing" effect by employing a simpler microprocessor-controlled technique, notwithstanding the fact that, in a reel-to-reel tape transport, the rate at which pulses are generated as the supply (or take-up) reel rotates changes as the radius of that reel changes.